Thursday, June 21, 2007

Most Hated Internet Words Have an Impact on Marketing

Apparently every time you say "blog," you're driving some people nuts. And if you say something like "be sure to use your netiquette when you're on my wiki," that's a recipe for disaster.

A new poll released the most irritating words that came from the Internet. The top five must hated web words are:

  1. folksonomy (web classification system using tags)
  2. Blogosphere (the universe of blogs)
  3. blog (uh, what you're reading)
  4. netiquette (rules of behavior on the web)
  5. blook (a book that came from a blog)
This clearly has marketing ramifications. Some people would love to have an online community where they could quickly post content and read what people thought about it. But those same people don't want a blog. People may want to know what all the blogs are saying about them, but they feel like a dork saying blogosphere.

Words matter. If you don't know that and appreciate that, then marketing is probably not a good career choice. And while some people no doubt admire your mad web 2.0 skills, Obi Wan, another percentage think you're being a dork.

It's easy to think everyone is talking about blogs. And they are. Just some people are making fun of it...